


Human Heart Interface

by ninemoons42



Series: SDJ [2]
Category: Ghost in the Shell, Prometheus (2012), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Alternate Universe - Movie Fusion, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Bombs, Cyborgs, First Time, Hacking, M/M, Major Character Injury, Transhumanism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-17
Updated: 2013-01-17
Packaged: 2017-11-25 20:52:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/642846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe Erik has settled in, maybe not, but the one thing that he has to remember now that his life is tied to Charles's is that he always and still has to expect the unexpected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Human Heart Interface

**Author's Note:**

  * For [afrocurl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afrocurl/gifts).



title: Human Heart Interface  
Coda to [Soldier Defendant Judge](http://archiveofourown.org/works/642837), which was written for Round Two @ [X-Men Big Bang](http://xmenbigbang.livejournal.com/)  
author: [](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/profile)[](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/)**ninemoons42**  
artist: [madsmurf](http://madsmurf.livejournal.com/)  
verse: This is an X-Men: First Class fusion with the world of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, which also includes themes and elements from Prometheus, Wanted, and Inception.  
word count: approx. 5,520 words  
rating: NC-17  
characters/pairings: Main pairing is Charles Xavier/Erik Lehnsherr. Cast includes the entirety of Public Safety Section 9 from Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex, and David 8 from Prometheus.  
warnings: Graphic depictions of violence affecting human beings, cyborgs, and androids, up to and including catching a bomb. Discussions of identity and attendant angst. Semi-explicit sex scene between a human being and a cyborg.  
This is written as a follow-up and additional story for Soldier Defendant Judge [and will not make sense without it], and is a birthday present for my alpha reader, the one and only [afrocurl](http://rozf.tumblr.com/).  
summary: Maybe Erik has settled in, maybe not, but the one thing that he has to remember now that his life is tied to Charles's is that he always and still has to expect the unexpected. 

**_HUMAN HEART INTERFACE_ **

Fukuoka is a rainbow wash of neon light; it is the constant breezes sweeping in from the Sea of Genkai; it is all of the world’s languages spoken as a haphazard mishmash of code-switching; it is the steady relentless flash and flow of motor and foot traffic.

And to Erik’s digital senses, to the part of him that sees the world in ones and zeroes, the city is a brilliant heart of green and blue glow: a no-place where he can almost read the rapidfire rattle of data streams flowing up and down and in every possible direction and a few that cannot exist in the real world. Binary clatter and clash, the thoughts of a wired world and all of its citizens no matter who or what they might be.

There is a quiet click from very close by, and Erik processes it and smiles.

 _Well, you’re online **now** ,_ is the message that Charles sends him. _I do like it when you think, though. You have an amazing mind. I could get lost in there._

 _You know you always can,_ Erik sends back.

_I know._

The problem with text-only communication is that it gets a little more difficult to parse emotions and intent and tone, but Erik thinks Charles might actually sound fond. Besides, Erik likes it when Charles talks to him, mind-to-mind or at least cyberbrain-to-cyberbrain, even though they have to be very quiet and very private and this kind of conversation really is no match for an actual interaction in the real world.

 _Rendering,_ Erik says after a moment, only half a joke. 

A part of his mind is currently helping Ishikawa with a real-time model of this particular section of the city: sturdy skyscrapers forming glass-walled canyons over the clamor and crash of the streets many hundreds of meters below. Another part is listening in to the Tachikoma as they maneuver into position; at least one of them has managed to scale this current building and is guiding its companions into position, happy lilting intricate nonsense: _Off target line by three point three five meters. Who set these target lines? David and Charles. I like them both. They are very precise. We do not always have to be!_

And yes, of course, Erik remembers exactly what they’re here for: why they are here on the rooftop, exposed to the elements, exposed to the restless Fukuoka night, and why they are not down there among the revelers, celebrating the beginning of a brief spring vacation.

What else does Section 9 do after all, he thinks, almost amused, as Major Kusanagi cuts through the four-way argument about guns and booze and unimpaired shooting that is going on between Batou, Saito, Pazu, and Togusa. Her voice is affectionate and mordant at the same time: “All of you shut up. I’m still officially pissed off at all of you because you’ve banned me from those kinds of games. Now can we get back to work please because there are _still_ only so many dick jokes in the world.”

Ishikawa scoffs and says, “You’re all amateurs,” and there’s a burst of vicious, knowing laughter over the silent comms.

The next voice is Charles’s, and even though Erik has been expecting him to say something for the past few minutes it’s still a surprise. “Found the firewall - excuse me, fire _walls_. I count two interlocking, and at least a handful of cryptographic sentinel ‘bots.” There’s a pause. “Looks like the target’s been reading about Second World War cryptography; I think the ‘bots might run on variants of the Enigma ciphers. Someone’s paranoid.”

“This person has a reason to be paranoid; unfortunately for him, he’s not wrong,” Kusanagi says. “I copy you on the security measures. Now shift your processing over to the others, Charles. I need you and Erik to work on the other thing.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Charles says, and Erik echoes him as he gets to his feet.

Far below, the city is oblivious to all of them, and to the work that they are doing.

Next to Erik, Charles is mostly a shadow in the light-drenched night: he’s wearing a black jumpsuit identical to Erik’s, except for the silvery material draped loosely around his neck, like an aviator’s scarf from the early 20th century; as well as a pair of dark lenses fitted over his eyes.

 _You look nice,_ Erik offers, and not for the first time, as his internal display lights up with building schematics and real-time feeds showing the deployment status of the rest of the team.

 _Thank you,_ Charles sends back, before he reaches for Erik’s hand and squeezes, once. 

“Everything all right in there?” Erik asks. The wind tears at his words and he’s glad they can hear each other over the noise.

“Ready as I’ll ever be. It’s a good thing I never really developed anything like a fear of heights.” Brief flash of a rueful grin. “Now let’s see to you,” Charles says.

His hands move rapidly over Erik’s shoulders and upper arms and torso, pale blurs checking the integrity of the rappelling gear. “Tell me about the last time you went climbing?”

Erik almost snorts out a quiet laugh. “Are we talking about climbing to get away from people trying to kill me, or are we talking about the other kind?”

That gets him a swat on the chest. “Rock formations,” Charles mutters. “Sky. Wind. You and a climbing rope.” 

“Music,” Erik adds. “I never went up or down in silence.” He hums a short melody, something pastoral and brooding at the same time, piano and violin.

“Tell me,” Charles says again.

“There’s not much to tell, really,” Erik says. “You go up, you go down. Sometimes there is someone to make the trip with you. Sometimes you do it alone. Sometimes you hang from an outcropping with a dusting of white chalk on four fingertips and that is all there is to it - all the reason you went up in the first place.” He smiles when Charles makes a face at him. “It was always good when I could make it to the top just as the sun began to set.”

“Better than a Fukuoka sunset or a London one?”

“Infinitely better.” Erik rifles through his memories - he’s more than thoroughly used to his cyberbrain by now, something new, a top-of-the-line model like the one Charles has - and sends him a vivid image of a sky lit up in a thousand shades of red and gold and orange, with the horizon a perfectly straight and sharp line between the dying light of the sun and the deepening shadows on the land.

“Beautiful,” Charles says, before he pats Erik on the left shoulder. “You’ll have to take me there sometime. And you’re all set for your descent.”

“And you? Though yours will be simpler than mine.”

Charles bites his lower lip, and pulls up his left sleeve to expose a set of switches in the skin of his inner wrist. “It may be simpler, but I’ve still only seen this done by the others.”

They’re both supposed to go _down_ to the objective, but while Erik is going to rely on cables and carabiners and knots to do so, Charles is taking a rather different path.

“Target sighted,” Togusa says on the comms. “Everyone get to positions, acknowledge when ready.”

As the chorus of responding voices comes in, from Charles himself, to the three Tachikoma, to Pazu calling in from their current headquarters, Erik murmurs an answer and keeps limbering up: he rolls his shoulders and shakes out his hands, feeling the blood flow through his veins, welcome warmth from the inside.

“Okay, Kusanagi’s off - Charles, you’re up,” Togusa says.

“You’ll be fine,” Erik says. “I mean, purely aside from the fact that you have to be alive when you get to the target because you have to guide me in.”

“You do say the best things,” Charles says, and he draws Erik in and kisses him on the corner of his mouth, soft and sweet and swift, before he steps away, just a few meters separating the two of them.

Still looking in Erik’s direction, Charles flings out his arms and without any other preamble he drops off, head falling back so that for a long heart-stopping moment he’s plunging head-first into empty space - and then he _flickers_ as he rights himself, as he pulls the rest of the thermoptic camouflage material across his face. Neon lights playing across him as he vanishes from sight.

Erik watches until even his infrared vision can no longer pick Charles up - and then he switches to another sense. He listens very carefully, because according to the mission briefing Charles has a very specific distance to fall - Erik counts the seconds, _two, three,_ and then there’s a distant impact, glass shattering far below.

The next message scrolls up in Erik’s heads-up display: _Landed in target area. All clear._

 _Clearing path from ground level,_ Kusanagi replies. _All units move in._

Erik takes one more deep breath - and then it’s as if he sinks into a different kind of awareness, one in which he doesn’t have to think as he checks the ropes and the knots and the rest of the gear. One in which he feels that he’s moving in response to the impulses thrumming under his skin and to the messages he’s still receiving from Charles [ _neutralizing hostiles, first objective cleared, where is everyone else - Tachikoma, fire again, two and a half meters to the left_ ].

He steps into the night, and with the wind and the lights and the city streets rushing toward him he doesn’t think about falling, just thinks about movement and Charles and the mission.

///

The other thing that Erik has suddenly gotten used to, other than the presence of Charles in his head and in his life and by his side, is this. Public Safety Section 9 runs missions all the time, and many of them are even easy, but when these missions begin the group’s motto might as well be _nothing, but nothing, ever goes right_.

He remembers the ropes going taut and then catching all the impact of his deceleration, and he remembers the annoying click-click-click of releasing the harness. He remembers the whisper of movement of Charles dropping briefly out of cover to beckon him to the other side of a doorway, so that they could both cover whatever might have been waiting for them inside.

And that, Erik thinks now, as he almost fumbles changing a spent magazine for a fresh one, was where the plan went completely to pieces.

At least he’s got more than enough backup, he thinks as he rolls out of cover - the “cover” in question being one of the Tachikoma - and he fires on the next group of incoming targets. There are flashes of movement in the corner of his eye, and he risks a look over his shoulder: there is a man and there is a woman, and they are both trying to defend themselves, but because the only way either of them can see their invisible assailants is when it’s too late to defend against punch and kick and throw, Erik thinks they’re probably just going to give Charles and the Major a workout, or that the fight might continue until someone gets bored.

 _I resemble that remark,_ Kusanagi comments, and the infrared allows Erik to see her aim a vicious kick to the man’s shins.

 _Is that because you’re about to get bored or because you already_ are _?_ Erik sends.

_I don’t know. Ask your Charles._

Erik very studiously does not think about reacting to that in any way, because he’s in the middle of a firefight. _He’s not_ my _Charles. He belongs to himself._

_A noble sentiment. But Erik. Even the Tachikoma say Charles is yours, and that you are his. You don’t get to argue about it any more._

He’s saved from replying when there’s a shriek, and someone or something barrels through Batou and Togusa’s crossfire - a shot-up artificial chassis, already on its last legs. Impossible to tell if it’s male or female or cyborg or android. The cracks all over the internal struts and servos are shooting out sparks, and Erik tracks the moving parts as quickly as he can - he intends to shoot out the power source and put the damn thing out of its misery, except that then it leaps past him and crashes into the four-way fray.

The next thing he knows is Charles screaming - his real voice, high and terrible and weighted with desperate force: “BOMB, _it’s a bomb_ \- everyone under cover!”

Erik feels himself moving, though it’s certainly not his own thoughts powering his arms and legs; he’s made to scramble into the nearest Tachikoma’s cockpit, made to slam the hatch. 

_Sorry, sorry, that was me, had to hack in, you need to get out,_ Charles sends, _I’m sending the Tachikoma instructions, it’s to keep you safe - NO NO MAJOR GET DOWN_

Erik shudders as the impact hits, the explosion loud even through the armor surrounding him.

“Charles!” And Erik screams at the Tachikoma: “Let me out!”

“Negative,” the Tachikoma replies. It sounds worried, and it also sounds determined and deadly serious. “I will keep you safe.”

“That is _Charles_ and that is _Kusanagi_ out there, what the hell is _wrong_ with you - and where are the others, where are Batou and Togusa,” and he switches to the silent comms: “Report, this is Lehnsherr, _that fucking bomb went off right behind me - ”_

“Saito here, I have visual on Batou and Togusa - looking at them right now.”

Togusa replies: “Yeah, we’re a little banged up here, going to need first aid, but Batou pulled us out of the blast radius just in time. Check your Tachikoma before you get out, Erik - ”

Erik is already moving - the explosion must have disconnected Charles, because he’s moving on his own again - and he coughs violently at the fumes and dust. It takes him a moment to clamber out of the Tachikoma’s cockpit, adrenaline-clumsy, and he runs his eyes over it in a quick check: there are scorch marks all over the thing, nothing a little elbow grease can’t buff out, and otherwise completely unharmed.

That’s when he clamps his hand firmly over his own mouth and nose and starts shouting over the silent comms: “Charles! Major! _Are you all right?_ ”

Movement out of the corner of his eye, and Erik drops into a half-crouch, draws a bead on center mass, before a completely visible Kusanagi walks out of the smoke. Her jumpsuit is torn up in several places, the shredded wiring for the thermoptical camouflage trails down from both wrists, and the entire back panel is a mess of shredded mesh and chunks of armor - but she’s upright and walking normally, never mind the gaping cracks in her artificial skin, leaving some of the inner workings of her prosthesis visible.

“You all right,” she asks.

Erik nods, temporarily left speechless at the sight of her. He’s been with the team long enough to almost get used to the way she shrugs off injuries - but somehow, looking at the long crack running down the right side of her face, continuing on past her eye and down to her throat, this seems so much worse.

“My ears are ringing,” Batou says as he hurries up, shrugging out of his jacket and offering it to the Major, shaking it at her until she accepts it. “You’re okay?”

“I am.”

It takes a very short eternity before Erik can manage to unstick his tongue. “Charles?”

“...I have no idea,” she says. “He’s not on the silent comms?”

“Togusa’s been trying to raise him, no response,” Batou says.

The Major’s expression hardens, and she beckons to Erik. “He pretty much took the brunt of the explosion - come on,” she growls, and leads him and Batou back through the smoke.

Just as Erik is about to step over a large piece of what he thinks is debris, he’s frozen in place again, and there’s a weight in his mind that seems both foreign and terribly familiar at the same time. _Hello. It’s me. It seems I’m useless unless over a very short distance right now,_ is the message that scrolls up in Erik’s heads-up display.

_Fuck. Charles. Let me go. Where are you?!_

Something mechanical whines and stutters, and then: _At your feet. Almost. Long step to the right._

Erik can feel his hands go cold as he’s released, and he follows the directions - and what he sees drives him down to his knees.

 _No need to be so worried,_ Charles sends. 

“Charles,” Erik says, and then words fail him for the second time, because this isn’t the first time he’s seen Charles go down after a mission, this isn’t the first time that Charles has needed to be picked up instead of walking away, because he has a definite tendency to stay behind and do something rash and _required_.

This is, however, the first time that there’s only _half_ of him to be found: the upper half of him, to be more specific, although if Erik squints at the longish piece near Charles’s shoulder he could almost think that the object is - was - Charles’s leg, or part of it.

Charles sends him another message: _Really, Erik. Only the shell is broken, and that can be easily fixed, or easily replaced. Everything else is fine: everything that makes me, me. I’m still here._

“Hey, Charles,” Batou says a moment later. “Got banged up but good, did you?”

 _Not something I want to do again in the near future, I assure you._ The words are aimed at Batou, but Charles is looking only at Erik, warm and steady. 

“Yeah, you’d better not. Kusanagi,” he says.

The Major joins them, then, and Erik watches her mouth twitch and tries to remember whether that means she’s annoyed or concerned or irritated or all of the above. “Pick him up,” is all she says, however. “Straight to Proto for restoration.”

Whatever strength Erik still has left after the battle is slowly draining away, but there is no question about who is going to gather up the pieces of Charles - and in the end, Batou helps sling Charles across Erik’s shoulders in a modified fireman’s lift.

 _Thank you, Batou,_ Charles sends. And: _Are you all right, Erik?_

 _I’ll be fine,_ Erik sends, and he double-times it past Batou and at least one of the Tachikoma. Why he hurries he has no idea.

///

“Hello, Erik,” David says when Erik wanders down to the basement several hours later. The bioroid looks only mildly curious. “Restoration operations are proceeding on schedule. I do not foresee any technical difficulties.”

“This is the first time you’re doing something like this for him,” Erik says, and looks around for somewhere to sit - but even the workbenches that are usually scattered around the middle of the room are missing. He puts his hands in his pockets instead, and paces.

“That does not matter, because it is my task to oversee, as well, when it is the Major who has to be transferred from an old body to a new one. Her specifications are a little more exacting than those of Charles, which is only natural because of her work and what her prosthesis must be capable of doing.”

Erik pours himself a cup of coffee and drains it in one gulp, though he makes a face afterwards. “Was that intended to be reassuring?” he asks.

“Was it not?” David says as he leans against the door into his quarters. 

Erik thinks about it. “Maybe it is, after a fashion.”

David nods, once. “I realize that you are worried about him. It is also true, however, that we know what we are doing.”

“Yeah,” Erik says, at last, and tries to relax. “It’s strange,” he adds. “Usually it’s Charles who worries about me, who patches me up when I’ve been injured during a mission.”

“He is an adequate field medic,” David says. “And because he is uniquely familiar with the workings of the peripheral nervous system, he possesses a more specific understanding of the techniques of pain alleviation.”

“I know. What I’m saying is, now I’m the one who’s worrying for him, except that you’re telling me that there’s no actual need for it. And both of those situations are strange to me.”

David tilts his head slightly to the right. “I am also familiar with many emotional and empathic responses in humans. You are exhibiting normal behavior: nothing that no one in Section 9 has not seen before. You are worried, and you have reason to be so. But perhaps I might suggest that you retire to the quarters that have been set aside for you.”

“I’m not leaving - ”

“I do not mean that you ought to leave the premises, Erik. I only mean that you should go upstairs and sit down. I do not think Charles will thank me when he steps out of the clean rooms and finds out that you have driven yourself half mad with worrying.”

Erik very, very briefly considers throwing the coffee cup at David.

He goes upstairs instead, into the break room next to Ishikawa’s office. He squeezes past Borma, who is reading a book, and Saito, who is playing solitaire. He half-falls into one of the chairs, and thinks that the other two might be attempting to strike up a conversation with him, but all he remembers is crossing his arms and then, suddenly, everything is dark and quiet.

///

He wakes up for a moment, but there is a familiar voice in his ear, whispering familiar things to him. 

Erik smiles, or tries to, and goes back under.

///

Erik rolls over and runs right into something warm and solid and unyielding, and the surprise of it is enough to make him open his eyes and take a bleary look around.

Daylight: bars of sunlight slipping through the cracks in the heavy curtains that kept out the noise and most of the breezes coming in off the shoreline. The brightness mixed in with pale gray, the same shade as the sheets wrapped around most of his body.

A familiar place. As familiar as the sight of Charles sleeping next to him, dark strands of hair fanning across his cheek. As well-known as the freckles on his shoulder, including the pattern that almost looks like part of a spiral galaxy. 

Charles’s hand is curled lightly over Erik’s hip, and Erik turns that hand over to reveal smooth skin, all the jagged edges smoothed away, and that’s when he wakes up completely.

Charles, sleeping by his side. Charles, at home, with him - when the last thing that Erik remembers is catching a glimpse of the clean rooms. Tanks of clear fluid and the blank eerie stares of mobile prostheses. Male and female bodies.

Erik reaches out to touch Charles’s face, and doesn’t know why his hand is trembling - and when he makes contact, Charles murmurs sleepily and opens his eyes.

He smiles. “Erik. Hello.”

“Charles,” Erik says, and then he bolts upright, crowds right into Charles’s space, gets his hands around Charles’s throat and the back of his head. He can see his own grip, he is aware of the tension in his fingers, and he knows that he should ease off or let Charles go entirely - but he has to _feel_ warmth and movement beneath him, has to know that this is Charles, the same person who went on the mission with him and leapt off the building to disappear in a flash of thermoptics.

The same Charles who caught a bomb.

“It’s me,” Charles offers. “It’s really me.”

He shouldn’t doubt Charles, but the words slip out anyway: “Prove it,” Erik says.

“I knew you were going to say that,” Charles says, before he touches his fingertips to Erik’s temples.

It is as if the gesture opens the gates in Erik’s mind. It makes him call out to Charles over their private comms: _How do I know that it really is you? How can I know that you’re Charles? They took away your scars, they made you whole again - they kept your freckles, your eyes, your hair. What else have they taken, and what have they left?_

_Are you still you after they pick you up and put you back together and send you home?_

That gets him another smile. “I can tell you Edie’s recipe for nougat, if you want. Or I can tell you about a white laboratory mouse named Thing.”

Erik opens his mouth to speak.

Charles beats him to it when he slithers out from underneath Erik, when he flips Erik over onto his back and looms over him. “Not enough?”

“I don’t know,” Erik says. “I think you asked me for proof, once. Proof that I was who I said I was. Now I want to ask that same question, even if some part of me tells me I shouldn’t have to. Now I don’t know how I’m supposed to do that to you.”

He braces himself for a fight, for Charles to move away or leave or worse - but all he gets is a warm look, and that’s where he is when Charles chuckles and leans down to ghost a kiss over his cheek. 

The room is filling up with sunlight, but Erik shivers at the spark of cool sensation that seems to carom all up and down his nerves. He knows this feeling like he knows the way his heart beats, like he knows the way a gun feels as he fires it, and this feeling is both of those things. This feeling is complicated, and it is something he wants.

“Erik,” and Charles’s voice cuts neatly through the whirl of his thoughts. He blinks, and there is that impish smile once again. “You snore.”

“I do,” Erik replies, startled into telling the truth. “I mean - what?”

He is treated to the sight of Charles going red with suppressed laughter - and he’s seen Charles look like this before, exactly like this, and it goes a long way toward easing his fears.

“Well, at last I’ve gotten you to admit it,” Charles says, raising one hand to half-cover his grin. “And it only took me jumping on a bomb.” 

“Not funny,” Erik says.

“I know. And that proves my point, actually,” Charles says, instantly sober. “The Major has left the restoration team standing orders that they are not to do anything to her cyberbrain even if she comes back in pieces. Even if that cyberbrain of hers comes back cracked or unstable or worse. Their only responsibility is to wire her in - they’re not even allowed to run diagnostics. You already know about her backup situation: the rule is, _anywhere but here_.”

Erik takes the information in. “And you? Are you telling me - ”

“I’m telling you that she has extended that set of orders to me.” Charles shrugs gracefully and leans in to steal another kiss. “So it will be me every time, and if you’d like to check - well, I’m sure we can find a way.”

Erik wants to reach out to him, wants to say something to him, but - but Charles is moving, and the smile on his face is somewhere between tentative and teasing as he slides off his loose shirt.

“Charles,” Erik says, then, and he sits up, very carefully, so as not to dislodge Charles from his lap. “I - how is it easy for you to understand me? How is it that you don’t mind that I’m paranoid and occasionally doubt _you_....”

He gets a kiss for that: slow and sweet and hot, and more than enough to leave him aching. “There are things I just _know_ , Erik,” Charles murmurs. “And I carry these things around in my mind, in the deepest parts of my cyberbrain, where the words fall away and all that is left to me is raw data.” 

Erik is looking right into Charles’s eyes as he finishes: “And even if I were reduced to nothing but that unknowable, unreadable raw data - I think, or maybe I _believe_ , that I’d still be with you.”

“I - _Charles_ ,” Erik says, and there’s nothing else he can think of, nothing else he can do - he half-falls forward, almost crashing into Charles, and this kiss is one that cuts him off at the knees, one that leaves him wrecked and broken and unable to perceive anything else but Charles.

There are hands moving on Erik’s skin - he didn’t notice Charles peeling him out of his shirt - and now they’re both struggling to get out of the rest of their clothes, their movements hectic, erratic, unstable.

Erik thinks he hears a long, low, ripping sound, and he can’t bring himself to care, because Charles is shifting restlessly against him, grinding into his lap, and every time they make contact is another flame sparking violently in his skin, is another rush of electricity down his nerves, every inch of him strained and straining towards Charles. 

They fall into each other, again and again, and every kiss is something new and something dangerous and something magnificent, and Erik is trying to pull Charles closer, and he thinks the two of them merging into one being won’t even be enough.

Charles is murmuring to him, one word, again and again, and Erik suddenly realizes that Charles is calling his name, and he opens his eyes.

Charles’s smile is brilliant and edged with passion, with intent, with need, and Erik is suddenly torn right down the middle between waiting for the question in those blue eyes and saying _yes yes yes_ and slurring over it in his haste, agreeing without ever hearing the question, without having to be prompted - but it’s he who speaks first: “Whatever you want, Charles. Anything. Everything.” He draws in a deep breath. “Tell me.”

Charles sways forward, as if to kiss Erik again, but at the very last moment he speaks and the words are sweet hot honey against Erik’s mouth: “Be with me now, Erik.”

Erik smiles, and nods, and he goes where Charles puts him, the two of them communicating with just a look, just a touch, silence and trust and desire humming in the few places where they’re close enough to touch but aren’t actually in contact: but by the time Charles is satisfied with their positions they’re both kneeling up on the bed, touching from shoulders to knees, and Erik’s arms are around Charles’s waist and Charles’s arms are around Erik’s shoulders.

Back and forth they rock against each other, and Charles sets the pace. They go slowly. There’s no need to rush. They have now and they have each other.

Erik’s blood pounds hotly in his veins, swells beneath his skin like a command, like a drug. 

Slick slide, sweaty skin, slow smolder.

He can’t breathe because this is so good, because Charles is so good.

Charles whispers into Erik’s ear, and Erik is only too happy to comply. He smiles when he touches Charles and leaves him reeling and gasping, and he moves his hand to the beat of their hearts: steady, rapid, and Charles rewards him by trying to press impossibly closer, until Erik’s knuckles are brushing against Charles’s taut stomach.

He’s so focused on letting Charles ride the edge, so focused on the excited sounds that Charles is making, that he very nearly falls apart when Charles reaches for him. “I - _fuck_ , Charles - ”

“Erik,” Charles says, hoarse and encouraging, already most of the way to gone.

“Close,” Erik says, and it’s both a statement and a question.

Charles processes that for what seems to be a very long time - nearly a second - and then he cries out before crushing his mouth to Erik’s.

Release: sudden and shocking and shared. 

Erik thinks he sees stars - not the handful he can just make out through Fukuoka’s light pollution. His stars make him think of his own nerves, exploding neurons, explosive sensation.

They are silent and wrapped up in each other for a long time, long enough that they both start when the lights outside their window change: spotlights along the waterfront, aimed at the pleasure craft and at the great ships alike. Charles settles back down quickly, however, and continues to be the big spoon. 

He is leaning against one of Erik’s shoulders in a way that Erik knows will leave him bruised come the morning or whenever they wake up, and he doesn’t mind at all, because he’s entirely too focused on Charles’s warmth. Charles’s weight pressing him down is a comfort. 

Erik pulls Charles closer.

This time it feels real. It feels like he’s the one who’s falling. 

Always toward Charles, into him.

[On to Soldier Defendant Judge - CREDITS](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/214100.html)  



End file.
